


Lies on the Whispering Wind

by bellatemple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-02
Updated: 2010-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt: Sam and Dean are separated--but not by choice. This is how they find back to each other. [sic]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lies on the Whispering Wind

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://spn-summergen.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_summergen**](http://spn-summergen.livejournal.com/) 2010\. Title and (fake) cut text are from Led Zeppelin. Further lyrics from The Grateful Dead, O.A.R., America, Blind Faith, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. With thanks to [](http://butterflykiki.livejournal.com/profile)[**butterflykiki**](http://butterflykiki.livejournal.com/) and [](http://whiskyinmind.livejournal.com/profile)[**whiskyinmind**](http://whiskyinmind.livejournal.com/) for cheerleading and beta work.

Around the campfires in the plains, tucked into wagon circles formed from converted diesel vans and RVs or sedans dragged across the open ground by teams of plodding, agreeable horses, the storyteller sings the songs everyone knows, plucks out melodies on the battered acoustic guitar he'd found at an abandoned commune out west and never learned to properly play. He favors the classics, his McCartney and Plant barely passable, but everyone sings along and applauds anyway, happy enough to be there and together, huddled together under an endless Hapshash sky.

He's never unwelcome, but he never stays long.

Alone, he often skips the campfire. The nights are never cold any more, though he's pretty sure he's made it nearly to the old Canadian border by now, and his threadbare Mexican blanket, grabbed from an abandoned gas station down in Oklahoma, is more than enough to keep out the bugs and breezes that make their way across the grass before sunrise. Alone, he leaves the guitar strapped in place across his horse's withers and stretches out flat on his back on the ground, hands folded behind his head, and he sings the songs he wants to hear, lullabies and creeping ballads and country-tinged blues more than an octave too low for his voice. He sings them soft and out of key, the words more interesting shapes around the notes than anything with inherent meaning. His horse has no use for meaningful words, and she doesn't mind if he can't always remember the whole song, or even an entire chorus.

 _Sometimes the light's all shining on me,  
Other times I can barely see,  
Lately it occurs to me  
What a long, strange trip it's been._

The stranger comes up without warning, a black silhouette swaying back and forth. His horse moves in fits and hops, fumbling occasionally backward before starting forward. The storyteller sighs and pushes to his feet. He's not in the mood for company, but the rider's likely to trample over him if he doesn't lift his hand in greeting.

The horse fumbles a few steps, and he can hear the stranger mutter at it.

"You've got reins for a reason, you know," the storyteller says. The stranger tilts his head up and back and dismounts on the wrong side before his horse has properly stopped, hopping to keep his balance.

"Not here for riding lessons," the stranger says.

"Your broken bones," the storyteller replies. His horse snorts into the grass behind him, and he thinks he agrees with her.

The stranger rubs a hand over his mount's neck, mutters "stay", and steps away, glancing down at his feet before coming forward. "You're the Storyteller?"

The capital letter is obvious, and the storyteller wants to say "no", but the label is as good as any, and he's got no desire to offer up a name. His own hasn't been spoken aloud in a long enough time that he's no longer certain he can remember what it is, and taking the wrong one feels taboo. He's superstitious, maybe, but he'd dare anyone to try to claim that they weren't, these days. "That's what I'm told," he says instead. "But I'm not really in the mood to spout out _Harry Potter_ , right now."

The stranger pauses, one foot raised a few inches from the grass, then shakes his head and smiles faintly, a split in his beard that doesn't quite show teeth. "I know that one well enough, anyway." He runs a hand over his head -- his hair is long, overgrown and held away from his face by twine that hangs down over his shoulder, and his fingers flutter faintly past his ear. The storyteller wonders why the stranger doesn't hack the ponytail off with a knife, the way he does when his starts to tickle like spiders at the back of his neck. No one much cares about hair styles, any more. The stranger lets his hand drop, as though self-conscious under his gaze. "They said I'd find you out this way."

The storyteller nods. There's only one settlement within a days' ride, and he'd been there just the night before. They had an actual band there, three guys from what used to be Austin who played songs that made him think of college towns and kids in crappy sandals. They'd taught him some of the words, just enough to earworm him, and tried to teach him a chord or two on his guitar.

 _And I said I've been walking for about a thousand years  
And my feet are growing tired  
My eyes a little wired  
Don't know what to do unless I retire  
And he just said "Let's play some crazy poker."_

He shakes the tune from his head. "Didn't realize anyone would be looking," he says, and somehow, it feels like a lie.

"Most probably aren't." The stranger waves a hand towards the storyteller and his horse, asking for an invitation. The storyteller can't quite make out the stranger's expression in the darkness, but he seems . . . tired. Run down in a way no one else is, these days. The days of lack of sleep and stress are gone from the world, and the stranger's exhaustion intrigues the storyteller. He's a throwback, an antique, comforting the same way the storyteller's music is, or the battered old gun he keeps in his saddlebags. He wonders where the stranger came from.

"Pull up some dirt," he says. "All I've got is a few old cans of beans, but you're welcome to them."

Another split in the stranger's beard, and his tone has gone wistful. "What, no Spaghettios?"

 _Uh oh, Spaghettios. . . ._

"No," the storyteller says. He shoves his hands into his pockets to hide his sudden discomfort. "No Spaghettios."

The stranger slips out of his jacket and lays it on the ground, then eases himself down on top of it, legs folded underneath him in a sort of half-Lotus position. His legs are too long to be entirely contained on the jacket, but he does his best. The storyteller wonders why the stranger bothers, what horrible things the stranger thinks will crawl up from the grass and the dirt. He settles back down on the bare ground across from the stranger, leaning back on his hands, wishing he had a boulder or a log or something to lean his back against. Most nights like these it doesn't matter -- he's not trying to look at anything but the sky. He wasn't looking for company tonight, but company's found him, and he's not sure he trusts the stranger enough to simply lie back down.

That's a throwback itself, he knows. There's not a soul still on Earth who'd take advantage of a man lying down.

"Nice horse," the stranger says, and the storyteller resists the urge to roll his eyes at the small talk.

"Thanks," he says, because she is a nice horse, a tall mare, deep and thoroughly black save for the blaze on her forehead and a single white sock. He thinks maybe he picked her for just those reasons, but she's ended up much more than just a pretty animal; fast and strong and reliable, as willing to ride all day as he is.

"It got a name?" the stranger asks.

 _I've been through the desert on a horse with no name. . . ._

"You didn't come here to talk about my horse."

"No," the stranger says. "I didn't."

The moon's rising now, huge, orange and full, creeping up over the horizon. Its light bleeds across the grasslands, chasing the breeze. The storyteller can make out more of the stranger's features, now, rather than just the ponytail and beard. He's younger than he'd first thought, with round cheeks and a broad nose, eyes deep set and narrow, but alert. He's a hunter, this one, running upstream against the current, while the rest of the word relaxes back like it's riding a lazy river at a water park.

"So, what, then?" the storyteller asks. "You want me to guess?"

The stranger rubs his arm, bared once he'd removed his jacket. He's got a band there, a scrap of torn cloth wrapped around his elbow, black in the light of the moon. A bandage, maybe, or a sign of mourning. The storyteller isn't sure which -- the mourning bands have been fairly popular recently -- but a faded line down the stranger's forearm makes him think it's likely a bandage. "I'm looking for a story," the stranger says, and the storyteller has to hold back on a snort.

"Plenty of people willing to tell you one of those, these days," he says.

The stranger nods and folds his hands in his lap. "No one's told it right, yet."

The storyteller hopes this isn't a case of 'no one remembers my favorite book right!', but something tells him it isn't. He tilts his head, inviting the stranger to continue.

"They say you're the best," the stranger says.

"That's nice," the storyteller says, though he doubts it's true. Traveling from group to group the way he does, he's seen all the types of folks who survived. Farmers aplenty, singers and actors and hunters and tailors, and every one of them tells stories. The world's made up of performers, these days, telling stories or singing or dancing when the sun sets and the work of the day is done. Remembering old traditions and rituals lodged deep in the base of their collective memories, dug up now that "social networks" require actual face to face socializing.

Still, he supposes stories and songs have always been a part of who he is -- they must have, as they're pretty much all he can still remember, ghost stories and legends especially. Those are favorites in almost any group. Everyone feels safe, these days, and they love to have just a little bit of harmless fear injected into their evenings.

He sits up, taking his weight off his hands and leaning his elbows on his knees to mirror the stranger's position. He wishes, suddenly, that he'd started a fire after all -- fires draw survivors like moths out here on the plains, but campfires are all but traditional, and a story doesn't quite feel like a story without one.

"I can give you something in return," the stranger says, and he blinks out of his reverie, meeting the stranger's eyes in surprise. Money's long gone, the new dodo -- fitting, since word is the old dodo is back and thriving -- and everyone seems to have agreed somewhere along the way that kindness is the new currency. You do for others because they do, too. The golden rule, enforced by nothing more than a shared joy of continued survival. The storyteller shakes his head, suddenly certain that to ask for something now would be to bring the whole system crashing down around their heads.

Look at that, another superstition.

"You don't have to."

"It's only fair."

The storyteller shakes his head. "No. It isn't."

The stranger purses his lips, making his mustache stand out under his nose. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me until the story's over. For all you know, I'll get it all wrong, too." He rubs the back of his neck. "Which one did you want to hear?"

"The story of the end."

The storyteller feels the energy drain from his face, gathering into a tight little knot around his heart. "Everyone already knows that story."

"I told you," the stranger says. "No one's gotten it right."

The storyteller takes a breath, wondering if he should reconsider his stance on payment, or maybe just kick the stranger out entirely. It's no small favor being asked here. The story of the end is the story no one tells. The rules of the new world are simple, but they're strict. Survive. Be happy. Don't hurt people. And don't talk about what happened between the before and the now.

Still, he suddenly knows he'll tell it. It's been burning up inside him, lingering on the back of his tongue with every other story he's told. All he needs is to know it's okay.

"Why?" he asks, and that single syllable is loaded with every 'why' he's been wanting to ask since he woke up in an empty city. The stranger picks at the band on his arm again, looking down.

"I'm tired," the stranger says. "I'm out of blood and time. I need y -- I need someone to get it right." And he looks up at the storyteller again, his eyes wide and dark in the moonlight. The stranger's desperate, at the end of his rope, driven to exhaustion by his hunt. The storyteller shies away from wondering what he's hunting. He looks down, not able to match the intensity of the stranger's gaze. He swallows.

"Okay," he says. "I'll try."

He looks up again, past the stranger's shoulder to the moon, thinks of how much larger it seems on the horizon, how large it seems in general, and wonders if it's somehow come closer to the Earth -- or if Earth has risen to meet it. He has a feeling it's the latter.

He breathes deep and begins.

"As I said," he says, and immediately, the words come tripping out over his tongue, almost too fast for him to keep up. "This is the story that everyone knows. The story of a war, the only war, really. A war on three fronts. A war which the wrong side won."

The stranger leans forward, face open and eager and so clearly visible now, despite having his back to the moon, that it almost hurts to look at him, and the storyteller closes his eyes. "That's the bit that maybe people get wrong," he continues. "The part no one wants to admit. The wrong side won, and the world changed. It's simpler, now, safer, but it isn't real. And it isn't free." He shakes his head. "I'm, uh. I'm getting ahead of myself."

"It's okay," the stranger says, and for some reason, the storyteller believes him.

He continues, and the story unravels before him, words and images flashing up against his minds eye. The story's deceptively simple, full of repeated themes of family and love and sacrifice and _brothers_ , always, always brothers, from the very beginning, always standing on opposite sides of the great war when they should be standing together in the middle. Michael and Lucifer, Cain and Abel -- the older kills the younger every time, a pattern set at the beginning of time.

"No," the stranger interrupts, frustration -- even anger -- weighing down his voice. "Not _every_ time."

The storyteller cracks open one eye and glares across at him. "Who's telling the damn story?"

The stranger seems to shrink. "Sorry."

The storyteller's eye closes again. "Anyway." He pauses, searching for the threads of the story, and continues. Brothers and fathers and mothers and brothers again, all down through the ages, all lined up to bring about the last pair, the two who would decide it all. "Like that's fair," he says, and the stranger snorts, and the storyteller thinks he agrees. "Two guys responsible for the fate of the world. And that's what they were, just . . . guys. Ordinary men somehow meant to be . . . vessels for the first brothers." The storyteller shakes his head, then, eyes still squeezed shut. "They were told they had a choice, but were only given one option: give in. Say yes." He swallows. His chest hurts and a buzz has started in his ears, trying to drown out the story, but now that it's started, he's not sure he can stop it. "End the world."

He has to pause then, take a breath. Re-center and find the peace that the stranger had shattered. It's not long enough -- his voice still shakes faintly when he continues, opening his eyes and forcing a light, casual tone he can't entirely feel. "I know, we're still here, right? World couldn't have ended. Every story's gotta have a happy ending."

The stranger looks up -- he's picking at the band around his arm, strangely intent on it, and the storyteller wonders if he's telling this forbidden story to the horses and the night sky. The stranger doesn't smile, just stares at the storyteller, eyes bright, almost unnaturally so, like he's searching past the storyteller's face and into his mind.

Or maybe his soul.

"Does it?" the stranger asks. It takes the storyteller a moment to figure out what he means. He swallows.

"Uh. So. These brothers. They've got -- they've got an army bearing down on either side of them, right? And their own side -- their own side won't even look at them, most days, blame them for the war even happening, and the older one -- the older one --"

Around the campfires, tucked into wagon circles, the stories come easily. The storyteller supposes it's because they don't mean anything to him. They're just words, like the lyrics to the songs that loop through his head, the ones he can't remember all of when it's just him and his horse and he can finally sing them just the way he wants to. This story fights him with every syllable, and he wonders if this is the one he's been trying so hard to remember all along -- or if it's the one he's told all the others so he can forget.

 _Come down off your throne and leave your body alone  
somebody must change  
You are the reason I've been waiting so long  
somebody holds the key  
Well, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time  
And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home_

"I'm sorry," he says, tongue too thick in his mouth. "I can't --"

The stranger picks harder at the band on his arm, hissing through his teeth as he pulls the last of it free, and the storyteller can make out dark lump of a scab on the inside of the stranger's elbow. The storyteller's eyes go wide as the stranger pulls a knife from his jacket. It's not like any knife the storyteller can remember seeing, not a utility knife, like the one he keeps in his own pocket, or the bowie knives some of the hunters in the settlements use. It's small and shining, catching the moonlight along tiny, etched designs running up and down the blade. The storyteller sits back, nearly falls.

"Jesus, man, it's just a story!"

The stranger looks up, from the knife to the storyteller, and his eyes -- the storyteller can't remember the last time he saw someone look so sad, though he thinks maybe that whenever it was, that person's eyes were just like the stranger's. There's a flash when the knife's blade breaks the skin below the scab, a snatch of blue and orange like a tiny flare, and the stranger drops the knife and leans forward, catches the storyteller's wrist, his grip gentle but firm.

The storyteller's head swims.

The stranger shakes his arm. "Does it have a happy ending?"

The storyteller shudders, shakes his head. "No. The older brother gives in. He lets Michael in, and they kill Lucifer."

"Lucifer," says the stranger. "Not Sam. Sam never said yes."

The storyteller's eyes ache and he wants to close them again, but he can't break the stranger's stare. "Heaven won. The world ended, and we're all stuck in . . . in a loop of quaint friendliness and it's _all my fault._ "

The stranger grins then, a full line of teeth and brightbright eyes and the storyteller realizes he recognizes him. "No," the stranger says. "It's not." He holds up his arm, shows the storyteller the way his blood trickles down, following the faint lines of his veins. When it hits his palm, he turns his hand sideways, and the blood turns, flowing up the line of his thumb. He turns his hand again, and the blood changes direction, always trickling forward, away from the stranger's body -- towards the storyteller. "I've been looking all over for you, man. Why couldn't you ever stop _traveling?_ "

The storyteller blinks hard. His head hurts. His eyes hurt and his cheeks are wet and his chest _aches_ , deep down and so bad he's not sure he can keep breathing. And the stranger -- the man -- _Sam_ keeps grinning at him like he just found the secret of life, and he can't --

" _Dean_ ," Sam says, and Dean heaves in a breath. "I found you," Sam says. "It's okay. I found you."

Dean shudders and gasps again, the sound of his name still reverberating through him, smoothing over the gaps and holes and rough patches Michael left behind. He feels suddenly exhausted, weighed down but also bound together, like he's been slowly falling apart and Sam's wrapped all his pieces up tight for him. "Sammy."

Sam yanks him forward into a tight hug. "Yeah, Dean. It's me."

 _I'm not home, I'm not lost  
Still holdin' on to what I got  
Ain't much left  
Lord there's so much that's been stolen_

Dean clings back, harder and longer than could ever qualify as "manly" under the old rules. He doesn't care. He's been walking in circles since Michael left him, with nothing but a headful of stories and songs to guide him, and finally he has an anchor and a compass -- a _home_ right in front of him.

He never wants to lose this again.

 _. . . still alive, still unbroken. . . ._

"The war's over, Dean," Sam says. "You won't have to."

And yeah, Dean thinks. Maybe the story will have a happy ending.


End file.
